Why Are Creatives Ditching Instagram for Vero Right Now?

Vero has recently seen renewed interest among creatives testing it as an alternative social media platform—but why?

If you're a creative professional using Instagram to build your portfolio and market your work, you might’ve been impacted by continuous ups and downs due to unpopular algorithm updates. As Instagram has shifted its focus to become a video and entertainment-centered app, many users have seen a decrease in organic reach and community engagement. These are just a few reasons why Instagram has received a lot of criticism lately.

Despite the increasing number of detractors, Instagram seems set on this trajectory. As a result, many creatives have started exploring alternative social media platforms to achieve their goals. There are other platforms out there that work similarly to Instagram on the surface, while offering additional benefits to the creative community of photographers, storytellers, videographers, musicians, and artists in many other disciplines.

One platform that's seen a surge in popularity recently is Vero—but what is this social media platform, and how can it benefit creatives? Read on to learn more.

What is Vero?

Vero is a social media network where creators can share a wide variety of original content with their community such as photos, videos, links, music, movies, TV shows, games, apps, books, and places.

Vero was officially founded back in 2015, but it wasn’t until 2018 that it started to gain some solid traction in the market with 3 million registered users. In recent months, there has been a renewed interest in the app, and it's estimated that Vero has somewhere between 4.5 and 5 million users. Although these numbers are still far away from the main social media platforms, the fast development of Vero 2.0 (the latest app update) is interesting to keep an eye on.

Vero app has built its value proposition based on user pain points of other social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

According to the mission statement on its website, Vero’s goal is to connect people meaningfully: "In a world over-run with fakes, deep fakes, trolls and bots, we commit to truth, transparency and meaningful connections." Even the naming of the social media platform stands for its values and mission: Vero means ‘True’ in Italian. True Social.

How to Vero compare to Instagram?

Vero offers some interesting advantages to the creative community. For example, it can be easier to get higher organic visibility of your work, as well as to gain followers—both of which are increasingly difficult on Instagram, especially for small accounts

Here, we explore the key similarities and differences between Vero vs. Instagram, looking at five ways Vero might benefit you as a creator:

1. It's a more dynamic platform: Vero’s content feed resembles Instagram's although you can share additional types of content besides images and videos, which leads to a more lively and interesting social media network where the community has the possibility to interact and engage in many different ways.

Dedicated recommendation posts are one of Vero's highlights. You can share with the community movies and TV shows you’re watching, restaurants you love, books you enjoy, music you're listening to, apps you can’t live without, or games you're playing online. As stated on Vero’s website: "Vero is for sharing what inspires and delights you with others doing the same."

2. The visual experience is at the center: Vero is designed to offer a premium visual and user experience. The wide variety of content categories are well organized in separate tabs at the top part of the feed, making them very simple and intuitive to find.

You can share regular photos and videos directly from your gallery or take a new one with your smartphone camera in the app. The use of hashtags is just like Instagram too.

Clickable links are a real thing on Vero, unlike Instagram. Also, when you’re recommending a movie, song, or book, the app will automatically feature an image or cover.

Vero offers a better user experience than Instagram by supporting high-resolution images (without having to crop them) and videos. It also supports a desktop app—still in beta version.

3. Vero is driven by a chronological content feed with no ads: one of the most controversial Instagram updates was the switch to an algorithm-based feed that ended up significantly limiting content reach and engagement.

Vero has made this one of its biggest strengths, giving everybody the same visibility and, therefore, the same chance to grow. They have a clear manifesto that can be summarized with the following claim: “more social, less media."

Vero is said to offer a fully organic and ad-free experience to the community with no data-mining behind it to derive analytical insights into user behaviors and make money out of it.

4. Optimized for connection, not addiction: Vero claims it encourages the use of the app in a meaningful and enjoyable way and puts you in control of how much time you spend on it, and with whom you share your content. The audience selector allows you to effectively control who is seeing your posts through four easy-to-use levels: Close Friends, Friends, Acquaintances, and Followers.

5. It’s for free—for now: although you can download and use Vero for free for now, it's unlikely the app will remain free forever. The company needs to generate revenue to be able to keep its value proposition as an ad and algorithm-free app.

The app might work based on a yearly small subscription fee in the future. Vero’s initial plan was to offer a free account to the first million users, but as the offer has been extended, it seems they are totally focused on getting as many app downloads and users as possible at the moment.

Vero's business model also includes affiliate links on recommendation posts where users have the possibility to buy items on external platforms in exchange for a percentage of every sale.

So, do you think Vero could be the social media app to take over Instagram in the near future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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